Maggie Shafran

Working from high-resolution images I find online, I fragment and translate paintings by Jan Van Huysum. I draw as a form of active viewing, zooming in and cropping to highlight details and symbols, revealing the worlds that exist within the work. Working with graphite saps the image of color, further allowing the viewer to focus on the playful activities of the putti, who can get lost amongst the bountiful, bright colors of the original painting. I draw on separate panels and sew them together, like Frankenstein stitching separate bodies to make his monster. Similar to how Van Huysum painted flowers in the same vase, regardless of the impossibility of their coexistence in reality. An element of the grotesque residing within the beautiful.

Maggie Shafran is a multidisciplinary artist interested in themes of humanity, memory, fragility, the impermanence of life, and the transformational quality of death. Originally from the US, she earned her undergraduate BA in Fine Art at Pitzer College in 2014. In 2020, she received a distinction for her Graduate diploma from the Royal College of Art and a distinction for her MA in painting at UAL Camberwell in 2024.